Abstract: Disclosed are treatments for cancer that enhance a patient immune systems' ability to detect and attack cancer. The present disclosure provides methods for treating cancer in a subject in need thereof comprising administering to the subject an effective amount of a pregnancy specific glycoprotein (PSG) inhibitor.

Abstract: Improved methodology for image processing and object tracking that, inter alia, reduces noise. In one embodiment, the methodology is applied to moving targets, and comprises processing sequences of images that have been corrupted by one or more noise sources (e.g., sensor noise, medium noise, and/or target reflection noise). A likelihood or similar logical construct (e.g., Bayes' rule) is applied to the individual images (or aggregations thereof) of an image sequence in order to generate a posterior image for each observed image. The posterior images are fed-forward to the determination of the posterior image for one or more subsequent images (after smoothing), thereby making these subsequent determinations more accurate. The net result is a more accurate and noise-reduced representation (and location) of the target in each image.

Abstract: A technique for analyzing images for a feature of interest includes generating gradients for a characteristic of an image, such as pixel intensity value, initiating a candidate boundary, and evolving the candidate boundary to the feature boundary. The gradients may be calculated at the outset and referred to through iterative steps in expansion of the candidate boundary to improve the computational efficiency of the processing. The candidate boundary is evolved, either inwardly or outwardly, by reference to mean curvature-weighted normals, resulting in very rapid convergence on the feature. The evolution naturally stops at the feature. The gradients may be diffused or smoothed to improve tolerance to artifacts and noise, while preserving original image definition and resolution. In a cardiac application, the endocardial and myocardial boundaries are analyzed and used to generate composite images, calculate ejection fractions and so forth.

Abstract: A technique for analyzing images for a feature of interest includes generating gradients for a characteristic of an image, such as pixel intensity value, initiating a candidate boundary, and evolving the candidate boundary to the feature boundary. The gradients may be calculated at the outset and referred to through iterative steps in expansion of the candidate boundary to improve the computational efficiency of the processing. The candidate boundary is evolved, either inwardly or outwardly, by reference to mean curvature-weighted normals, resulting in very rapid convergence on the feature. The evolution naturally stops at the feature. The gradients may be diffused or smoothed to improve tolerance to artifacts and noise, while preserving original image definition and resolution. In a cardiac application, the endocardial and myocardial boundaries are analyzed and used to generate composite images, calculate ejection fractions and so forth.

Abstract: A technique for analyzing images for a feature of interest includes generating gradients for a characteristic of an image, such as pixel intensity value, initiating a candidate boundary, and evolving the candidate boundary to the feature boundary. The gradients may be calculated at the outset and referred to through iterative steps in expansion of the candidate boundary to improve the computational efficiency of the processing. The candidate boundary is evolved, either inwardly or outwardly, by reference to mean curvature-weighted normals, resulting in very rapid convergence on the feature. The evolution naturally stops at the feature. The gradients may be diffused or smoothed to improve tolerance to artifacts and noise, while preserving original image definition and resolution. In a cardiac application, the endocardial and myocardial boundaries are analyzed and used to generate composite images, calculate ejection fractions and so forth.

Abstract: The noise reduction system of the present invention takes into account that noise is random with little between images adjacent physically, and in sampling time. It also takes into account the fact that some sequences of images are cyclical and “wrap around” in time with the beginning closely resembling the end of the cycle. A filter was developed which would smooth noise in a direction along an edge, but will not blur across an edge. It operates by determining vectors tangential to a surface point p, at a current voxel, and projecting 4D data onto the tangential vectors. A curvature matrix B&agr;&bgr; is determined. The eigenvalues of curvature matrix B&agr;&bgr; are determined to result in three curvatures for 4 dimensions. If the sign of all of the eigenvalues is the same, the current voxel is filtered, else, it is unchanged. This filtering is repeated for a number of voxels as the current voxel within a desired region for a single iteration.